He's in a jar. There was a Lot of agitation among the boys as they queried often about snakes. I could tell by the pointing and hand movements and words like python and poison. Where are they, will they get us, will we die, was the basic scenario. Not here, no and no, was the answer.

But in fact there were poisonous snakes, it's just the odds of even seeing one was beyond remote. I happily agreed to accept that snakes were not a threat to Reserva Amazonica tourists.

I wasn't going to worry about the piranhas either. Or the caiman, crocodile cousins that populate the banks of the Madre de Dios.